Holekamp Lumber Quotes

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head. ~ Alexander Pope

The Duke [John Wayne] was a massive figure. He looked like a heavy piece of hauled lumber, and it didn't seem like any man could stand shoulder to shoulder with him. ~ Bob Dylan

A newspaper is lumber made malleable. It is ink made into words and pictures. It is conceived, born, grows up and dies of old age in a day. ~ Jim Bishop

I guess I remembered clearest of all the early mornings, when the lake was cool and motionless, remembered how the bedroom smelled of the lumber it was made of and of the wet woods whose scent entered through the screen. ~ E.B. White

People in suburbia see trees differently than foresters do. They cherish every one. It is useless to speak of the probability that a certain tree will die when the tree is in someone's backyard ... You are talking about a personal asset, a friend, a monument, not about board feet of lumber. ~ Roger Swain

The enormous multiplication of books in every branch of knowledge is one of the greatest evils of this age, since it presents one of the most serious obstacles to the acquisition of correct information by throwing in the reader's way piles of lumber in which he must painfully grope for the scraps of useful matter, peradventure interspersed. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

My father was a logger. He cut timber and hauled it out of the woods and had a sawmill. They sawed it into lumber. And, you know, the mines needed things they call timbers and collars and so forth, and they used collars on the railroad track that they put the rails on. And he - that was his occupation, just a sawmill man and a logger. ~ Ralph Stanley

Government barriers on Business For example, the Endangered Species Act prevents 'disturbing the habitat' of the spotted owl. That has restricted 4.2 million acres of forest from development, leading to the loss of 30,000 lumber-related jobs and the annual loss of 1.1 billion board feet of lumber. This has driven up the cost of houses by at least $4,000 each. In addition, regulators ordered a Kansas City bank to install a Braille keypad on its drive-through automatic teller machine, presumably to aid any blind drivers. The list goes on and on. ~ Rush Limbaugh

His leg split like a piece of lumber being hit with an awl. ~ Andrew Cormier

Throw the lumber over, man! ~ Jerome K. Jerome

My wife and I said good-bye the next morning in a little sheltered place among the lumber on the wharf; she was one of your women who never like to do their crying before folks.
She climbed on the pile of lumber and sat down, a little flushed and quivery, to watch us off. I remember seeing her there with the baby till we were well down the channel. I remember noticing the bay as it grew cleaner, and thinking that I would break off swearing; and I remember cursing Bob Smart like a pirate within an hour.
("Kentucky's Ghost") ~ Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

Ottawa - a sub-arctic lumber-village converted by royal mandate into a political cockpit. ~ Goldwin Smith

New Rule: Coal companies have to stop calling coal "energy." That's like a lumber company calling wood "fire." Or Budweiser calling beer "urine." Okay, that one kind of makes sense. ~ Bill Maher

Nicholas met with him earlier about some lumber deal and sent him here for lunch. He's evidently new in town and was wondering where to get something good to eat. ~ Melissa Jagears

What an unappealing responsibility that is to lumber any prospective lover with: the need to be a saviour, not simply an equal partner. ~ Mariella Frostrup

PPPS. I hope Butterbur sends this promptly. A worthy man, but his memory is like a lumber-room: thing wanted always buried. If he forgets, I shall roast him. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

There are so many things we take in subconsciously and are unaware we ever saw. There is plenty of lumber like that in our minds. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

Things need shaking up when American women feel endangered even as Yosemite bears lumber around belching, their eyes glazed with surfeit, their pelts covered in Oreo crumbs. ~ Sandra Tsing Loh

Strange that so few ever come to the woods to see how the pine lives and grows and spires, lifting its evergreen arms to the light,
to see its perfect success; but most are content to behold it in the shape of many broad boards brought to market, and deem that its true success! But the pine is no more lumber than man is, and to be made into boards and houses is no more its true and highest use than the truest use of a man is to be cut down and made into manure. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Home was something besides so much lumber and plaster. You built your thoughts into the frame work. You planted a little of your heart with the trees and the shrubbery. ~ Bess Streeter Aldrich

Dead, we become the lumber of the world, And to that mass of matter shall be swept Where things destroyed with things unborn are kept. ~ Seneca The Younger

Some guy workin' at Home Depot, he wants to f-k just as many women as a celebrity. But he can't do it, because whores don't care about lumber. ~ Bill Burr

What a huge inaccessible lumber-room of thought and experience we amounted to, I thought; how much we are, how little we transmit. ~ H.G.Wells

You can't tell what's aboard a container ship. We carried every kind of cargo, all of it on view: a police car, penicillin, Johnnie Walker Red, toilets, handguns, lumber, Ping-Pong balls, and IBM data cards. ~ Christopher Buckley

Like all photographers, I depend on serendipity I pray for what might be referred to as the angel of chance. ~ Sally Mann

Don't smile. Don't sweat. Don't do nothing. Don't even breathe. It was like watching a salivating bear you knew would either lumber past and go on its way ... Or rip your arm off and beat you with it. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Ah, snug lie those that slumber Beneath Conviction's roof. Their floors are sturdy lumber, Their windows weatherproof. But I sleep cold forever And cold sleep all my kind, For I was born to shiver In the draft from an open mind. ~ Phyllis McGinley

I told you she had an inconsequent mind. That's putting it much too mildly. When it comes to anything like evidence, she hasn't really got a mind at all - she just dives into a sort of lumber-room and brings out odds and ends. ~ Patricia Wentworth

Whatever alleged 'truth' is proven by results to be but an empty fiction, let it be unceremoniously flung into the outer darkness, among the dead gods, dead empires, dead philosophies, and other useless lumber and wreckage! ~ Anton Szandor LaVey

Twenty-five years ago the school children used to chant their lessons. The manner of their delivery was a singsong recitative between the utterance of an Episcopal minister and the drone of a tired sawmill. I mean no disrespect. We must have lumber and sawdust. ~ O. Henry

It's so hard to think about designing our dream home when all l wanna do is lay you out like a blueprint & bring you the lumber you require. ~ Curtis Tyrone Jones

I was tired of working in the lumber industry," Phil said. "I was sure I could find a better job, and look at me now - cook on a dilapidated submarine. Life keeps on getting better and better." "You always were an optimist," Klaus said. ~ Lemony Snicket

Memory, I must suppose, if it is neglected becomes like a box room, or a lumber room in an old house, the contents jumbled about, maybe not only from neglect but also from too much haphazard searching in them, and things to boot thrown in that don't belong there. ~ Sebastian Barry

Overall I can fairly safely say Bobby Orr impressed me more than anybody with his tremendous talents. In Bobby's first N.H.L. game he layed the lumber to Gordie's head. Later Howe retalliated and wanted to let the kid know he wasn't washed up yet. ~ Gordie Howe

Before that summer, I had many times heard long-winded Baptist preachers take ten minutes to pray over card tables of potato salad and fried chicken at church picnics, but the way those sweating, red-faced men sat around on stacked pallets of lumber gulping oysters taught me most of what I knew about simple gladness. ~ Mary Karr

Most countries are static, all they need to do is keep having babies. But America's like this big old clanking smoking machine that just lumbers across the landscape scooping up and eating everything in sight. ~ Neal Stephenson

A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I consider that a man's brain is originally like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge that might be useful to him gets crowded out. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Possibly this is one more version of "disappearing into your life", the way career telephone company bigwigs, overdutiful parents and owners of wholesale lumber companies are said to do and never know it. You simply reach a point at which everything looks the same but nothing matters much. There's no evidence you're dead, but you act that way. ~ Richard Ford

Who taught us to bow our heads
while waiting for trains? to touch
lumber without regret and sing privately
or not at all? To invest the season
with forgiveness and coax from it
a hopeful omen? Lord knows
the hope would heal this little fear.
But who taught us to fear? ~ James Harms

We are all fed from hundreds and thousands of hands. Often we do not know whose they are nor how they work. Only a few of us ever visualize the hands that grope in the coal mines or push levers in the mills or handle axes in the lumber camp. ~ Louis MacNeice

Government, not the oil industry, is the biggest 'profiteer' from oil. And it uses the tax revenue to expand its own authority at the expense of the individual, as it does with an endless number of other industries - including electric power, coal, lumber, pharmaceuticals, automobiles, aircraft, and agriculture. The Statist's intrusion to the free market is boundless. ~ Mark Levin

He was silent. Well! Now she knew how right she had been. He was not in the least in love with her, and very happy she was to know it, All she wanted was a suitable retreat, such as a lumber-room, or a coal-cellar, in which to enjoy her happiness to the full. ~ Georgette Heyer

Sixers pour in from every edge of the bridge. We humans back into the center as they lumber toward us. I have my knives out, but they might as well be toothpicks pointed at an army of grizzlies. "Penryn!" I look up to see Raffe watching me with anguish in his eyes as his Watchers hold him at a safe distance from us. ~ Susan Ee

The land afterward was cleared by oxen, the fallen trees stripped of their bark and cut for lumber that would be used in the construction of the villa, in which the women would live as servants, on whose property their daughters terraced the mountain for orange and lemon groves, where they could see to the east from the peak of Mount Terminus their sons raising swine in the valley below. ~ David Grand

It's like some folks has the smooth, pretty boards to build a courthouse with and others dont have no more than rough lumber fitten to build a chicken coop. But it's better to build a tight chicken coop than a shoddy courthouse, and when they both build shoddy or build well, neither because it's one or tother is going to make a man feel the better nor the worse. ~ William Faulkner

Make no mistake, our economic system can do no other than destroy everything it encounters. That's what happens when you convert living beings to cash. That conversion, from living trees to lumber, schools of cod to fish sticks, and onward to numbers on a ledger, is the central process of our economic system. Psychologically, it is the central process of our enculturation; we are most handsomely rewarded in direct relation to the manner in which we can help increase the Gross National Product. ~ Derrick Jensen

A little attention however to the nature of the human mind evinces that the entertainments of fiction are useful as well as pleasant. That they are pleasant when well written, every person feels who reads. But wherein is its utility, asks the reverend sage, big with the notion that nothing can be useful but the learned lumber of Greek and Roman reading with which his head is stored? I answer, every thing is useful which contributes to fix us in the principles and practice of virtue. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Life itself turned our planet blue and green, as tiny photosynthetic bacteria cleansed the oceans of air and sea, and filled them with oxygen. Powered by this new and potent source of energy, life erupted. Flowers bloom and beckon, intricate corals hide darting gold fish, vast monsters lurk in black depths, trees reach for the sky, animals buzz and lumber and see. And in the midst of it all, we are moved by the untold mysteries of this creation, we cosmic assemblies of molecules that feel and think and marvel and wonder at how we came to be here. ~ Nick Lane

I've used the common wooden pencil in some of my writing as an example. When I ask audiences which is "simpler", a digital pencil like Microsoft Word or a wooden pencil, people agree the wooden variety is simpler. Until I point out that Microsoft Word was written by eight programmers, while the wooden variety involved thousands, none of whom could appreciate the full complexity of harvesting lumber, mining graphite, smelting metals, making lacquer, growing rapeseed for oil, etc. The complexity was there in the pencil, but hidden from the user. ~ Brad Cox

The problem with our churches today is that the lead pastor is some sissy boy who wears cardigan sweaters, has The Carpenters dialed in on his iPod, gets his hair cut at a salon instead of a barber shop, hasn't been to an Ultimate Fighting match, works out on an elliptical machine instead of going to isolated regions of Russia like in Rocky IV in order to harvest lumber with his teeth, and generally swishes around like Jack from Three's Company whenever Mr. Roper was around. ~ Mark Driscoll

Fuchsia took three paces forward in the first of the attics and then paused a moment to re-tie a string above her knee. Over her head vague rafters loomed and while she straightened her-self she noticed them and unconsciously loved them. This was the lumber room. Though very long and lofty it looked relatively smaller than it was, for the fantastic piles of every imaginable kind of thing, from the great organ to the lost and painted head of a broken toy lion that must one day have been the plaything of one of Fuchsia's ancestors, spread from every wall until only an avenue was left to the adjacent room. This high, narrow avenue wound down the centre of the first attic before suddenly turning at a sharp angle to the right. The fact that this room was filled with lumber did not mean that she ignored it and used it only as a place of transit. Oh no, for it was here that many long afternoons had been spent as she crawled deep into the recesses and found for herself many a strange cavern among the incongruous relics of the past. She knew of ways through the centre of what appeared to be hills of furniture, boxes, musical instruments and toys, kites, pictures, bamboo armour and helmets, flags and relics of every kind, as an Indian knows his green and secret trail. Within reach of her hand the hide and head of a skinned baboon hung dustily over a broken drum that rose above the dim ranges of this attic medley. Huge and impregnable they looked in the warm still half-light, but Fuchsi ~ Mervyn Peake

What you must remember is that the magic itself is neither good nor bad, no more so than this ship might be used for right or wrong. It might be used by a fisherman to feed a village, for example. Or, the same vessel might be sailed by pirates to murder and pillage ... the lumber, rope, nails, cotton, and everything that goes into it-is created by the True One. Humans decide how it is to be put together and how it is used. ~ Derek Donais

I'm a nature lover, I want at any given time to be able to bring lots of plants into my house, have lots of light flooding in, have lots of natural elements. Reclaimed lumbers, actual live edge slab tables. I do love technology, but I want the TV to be hidden away a little, I want the speakers to be up on the ceiling. ~ Sebastian Clovis

A home is much more than a house built of lumber, brick, or stone. A home is made of love, sacrifice, and respect. We are responsible for the homes we build. We must build wisely, for eternity is not a short voyage. There will be calm and wind, sunlight and shadows, joy and sorrow. But if we really try, our home can be a bit of heaven here on earth. The thoughts we think, the deeds we do, the lives we live not only influence the success of our earthly journey, they also mark the way to our eternal goals. ~ Thomas S. Monson

Let the trees be consulted before you take any action
every time you breathe in thank a tree
let tree roots crack parking lots at the world bank headquarters
let loggers be druids specially trained and rewarded
to sacrifice trees at auspicious times
let carpenters be master artisans
let lumber be treasured like gold
let chain saws be played like saxophones
let soldiers on maneuvers plant trees give police and criminals a shovel
and a thousand seedlings
let businessmen carry pocketfuls of acorns
let newlyweds honeymoon in the woods
walk don't drive
stop reading newspapers
stop writing poetry
squat under a tree and tell stories. ~ John Wright

I would have stolen it for you, had I known you were interested." His voice was muffled by the door to the lumber room down the hallway, and I heard thumps and a crash.
I raised my voice a trifle more than mere volume required. "I'm interested because she was. Both of them, come to that
Damian's art is infused with mystic symbols and traditions."
Holmes' voice answered two inches away from my ear, making me jerk and spray a handful of maps across the floor. "Religion can be a dangerous thing, it is true," he remarked darkly, and went out again. ~ Laurie R. King

Self-consciousness, however, does hinder the experience of the present. It is the one instrument that unplugs all the rest. So long as I lose myself in a tree, say, I can scent its leafy breath or estimate its board feet of lumber, I can draw its fruits or boil tea on its branches, and the tree stays tree. But the second I become aware of myself at any of these activities
looking over my own shoulder, as it were
the tree vanishes, uprooted from the spot and flung out of sight as if it had never grown. And time, which had flowed down into the tree bearing new revelations like floating leaves at ever moment, ceases. It dams, stills, stagnates. (Harper Perennial Edition 82) ~ Annie Dillard

Watching him lumber back toward the apartment building, I got so mad I did something I can't explain. As Gabe reached the doorway, I made the hand gesture I'd seen Grover make on the bus, a sort of warding-off-evil gesture, a clawed hand over my heart, then a shoving movement toward Gabe. The screen door slammed shut so hard it whacked him in the butt and sent him flying up the stair case as if he'd been shot from a cannon.
Maybe it was just the wind, or some freak accident with the hinges, but I didn't stay long enough to find out.
I got in the Camaro and told my mom to step on it. ~ Rick Riordan

The day came when my travels took me to Pyrrha. As soon as I set foot there, everything I had imagined was forgotten; Pyrrha had become what is Pyrrha; and I thought I had always known that the sea is invisible from the city, hidden behind a due of the low, rolling coast; that the streets are long and straight; that the houses are clumped at intervals, not high, and they are separated by open lots with stacks of lumber and with sawmills; that the wind stirs the vanes of the water pumps. From that moment on the name Pyrrha has brought to my mind this view, this light, this buzzing, this air in which a yellowish dust flies: obviously the name means this and could mean nothing but this. ~ Italo Calvino

I do not see how it is possible for a man to die worth fifty million of dollars, or ten million of dollars, in a city full of want, when he meets almost every day the withered hand of beggary and the white lips of famine. How a man can withstand all that, and hold in the clutch of his greed twenty or thirty million of dollars, is past my comprehension. I do not see how he can do it. I should not think he could do it any more than he could keep a pile of lumber on the beach, where hundreds and thousands of men were drowning in the sea. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Like the librarians of Babel in Borges's story, who are looking for the book that will provide them with the key to all the others, we oscillate between the illusion of perfection and the vertigo of the unattainable. In the name of completeness, we would like to believe that a unique order exists that would enable us to accede in knowledge all in one go; in the name of the unattainable, we would like to think that order and disorder are in fact the same word, denoting pure chance.
It's possible also that both are decoys, illusions intended to disguise the erosion of both books and systems. It is no bad thing in any case that between the two our bookshelves should serve from time to time as joggers of the memory, as cat-rests and as lumber-rooms. ~ Georges Perec

One might fancy that day, the London day, was just beginning. Like a woman who had slipped off her print dress and white apron to array herself in blue and pearls, the day changed, put off stuff, took gauze, changed to evening, and with the same sigh of exhilaration that a woman breathes, tumbling petticoats on the floor, it too shed dust, heat, colour; the traffic thinned; motor cars, tinkling, darting, succeeded the lumber of vans; and here and there among the thick foliage of the squares an intense light hung. I resign, the evening seemed to say, as it paled and faded above the battlements and prominences, moulded, pointed, of hotel, flat, and block of shops, I fade, she was beginning. I disappear, but London would have none of it, and rushed her bayonets into the sky, pinioned her, constrained her to partnership in her revelry. ~ Virginia Woolf

In the case of Switzerland, a whole country is concerned with the species-appropriate treatment of all things green. The constitution reads, in part, that "account [is] to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms." So it's probably not a good idea to decapitate flowers along the highway in Switzerland without good reason. Although this point of view has elicited a lot of head shaking in the international community, I, for one, welcome breaking down the moral barriers between animals and plants. When the capabilities of vegetative beings become known, and their emotional lives and needs are recognized, then the way we treat plants will gradually change, as well. Forests are not first and foremost lumber factories and warehouses for raw material, and only secondarily complex habitats for thousands of species, which is the way modern forestry currently treats them. Completely the opposite, in fact. ~ Peter Wohlleben

My kids are starting to notice I'm a little different from the other dads. "Why don't you have a straight job like everyone else?" they asked me the other day.
I told them this story:
In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, "Look at me ... I'm tall, and I'm straight, and I'm handsome. Look at you ... you're all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you." And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, "Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest." So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day. ~ Tom Waits

Out of the brown mouth into a slanted easterly rain they head south along the shore, pushed toward it on a light chop, all but the pilot huddling under plastic sheeting that covers lumber, nails, window casings and plantains - the women sharing a seat, Reese behind them and the boatman behind him in a narrow-running balance. The land retreats as the dory crosses a wide bight toward the next point, rising and dropping on larger waves while a seaside village of thatch and palm passes thin and blurry in the drizzled distance. Two miles later another village appears, much the same but longer along the curve and then, past the point, the coast is tangled in mangrove, grass and sea grape. The passengers peer out of the plastic at a rain-erased horizon as the dory slices and slows in equal measure and the boatman bails with a cut jug the rolling puddle at his feet. ~ Michael Jarvis

For three thousand years it had been the concent's policy to accept any and all folding chairs and collapsible tables made available to it, and never throw one away. On one and only one occasion, this had turned out to be a wise policy: the millennial Apert of 3000, when 27,500 pilgrims had swarmed in through the gates to enjoy a square meal and see the End of the World. We had folding chairs made of bamboo, machined aluminum, aerospace composites, injection-molded poly, salvaged rebar, hand-carved wood, bent twigs, advanced newmatter, tree stumps, lashed sticks, brazed scrap metal, and plaited grass. Tabletops could be made of old-growth lumber, particle board, extruded titanium, recycled paper, plate glass, rattan, or substances on whose true nature I did not wish to speculate. Their lengths ranged from two to twenty-four feet and their weights from that of a dried flower to that of a buffalo. ~ Neal Stephenson

After Death nothing is, and nothing, death,
The utmost limit of a gasp of breath.
Let the ambitious zealot lay aside
His hopes of heaven, whose faith is but his pride;
Let slavish souls lay by their fear
Nor be concerned which way nor where
After this life they shall be hurled.
Dead, we become the lumber of the world,
And to that mass of matter shall be swept
Where things destroyed with things unborn are kept.
Devouring time swallows us whole.
Impartial death confounds body and soul.
For Hell and the foul fiend that rules
God's everlasting fiery jails
(Devised by rogues, dreaded by fools),
With his grim, grisly dog that keeps the door,
Are senseless stories, idle tales,
Dreams, whimseys, and no more. ~ John Wilmot

That was the great misconception about men: because they dealt with money, because they could hire someone on and later fire him, because they alone filled state assemblies and were elected congressional representatives, everyone thought they had power. Yet all the hiring and firing, the land deals and the lumber contracts, the complicated process for putting through a constitutional amendment-these were only bluster. They were blinds to disguise the fact of men's real powerlessness in life. Men controlled the legislatures, but when it came down to it, they didn't control themselves. Men had failed to study their own minds sufficiently, and because of this failure they were at the mercy of fleeting passions; men, much more than women, were moved by petty jealousies and the desire for petty revenges. Because they enjoyed their enormous but superficial power, men had never been forced to know themselves the way that women, in their adversity and superficial subservience, had been forced to learn about the workings of their brains and their emotions. ~ Michael McDowell

I used to have a crow named Albert. Bertie, when I got to know him better. I got him when he was just a little guy and had him for years. A young crow doesn't navigate well and they'll sometimes crash-land. They're called branchers at that age-that's about all they can do, lumber awkwardly from branch to branch. Sometimes they get stuck and they wail like babies until you get 'em down. Bertie must have bitten off a bit more than he could chew and he'd tumbled to the ground. I had a cat named Little John who brought him in, squawking hellishly. LJ and I had a tussle to see who was going to take possession. Fortunately for Bertie, I won the contest. He and the cat became friends later, but it was touch-and-go for a while there. LJ was pissed off because he thought this was Thanksgiving dinner and I was getting in his way (Dietz) ~ Sue Grafton

Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife. Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles. There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty looking cookstove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in one corner, and Dorothy a little bed in another corner. There was no garret at all, and no cellar - except a small hole dug in the ground, called a cyclone cellar, where the family could go in case one of those great whirlwinds arose, mighty enough to crush any building in its path. It was reached by a trap door in the middle of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole. ~ L. Frank Baum

Bad luck alone does not embitter us that badly . . . nor does the feeling that our affairs might have been better managed move us out of range of ordinary disappointment; it is when we recognize that the loss has been caused in great part by others; that it needn't have happened; that there is an enemy out there who has stolen our loaf, soured our wine, infected our book of splendid verse with filthy rhymes; then we are filled with resentment and would hang the villains from that bough we would have lounged in liquorous love beneath had the tree not been cut down by greedy and dim-witted loggers in the pay of the lumber interests. Watch out, then, watch out for us, be on your guard, look sharp, both ways, when we learn--we, in any numbers--when we find who is forcing us--wife, children, Commies, fat cats, Jews--to give up life in order to survive. It is this condition in men that makes them ideal candidates for the Party of the disappointed People. ~ William H Gass

I don't know when I can come back," he said. "The second you get tired of living in a smelly old surplus tent, I want you to come across town to my house." Mollie nodded and stepped closer. How safe she felt standing within the circle of his arms and laying her head against his chest, where she could hear the strong beating of his heart. "I heard it the first time you offered," she said with a smile in her voice. "And the fifth, and the tenth." He pinched her cheek. "Such a clever lass. I knew there was a reason I liked you." Why didn't she just leave with him? When she glanced over at the church, she saw Sophie reading the daily newssheet to Frank while Dr. Buchanan played a game of dice with the lumber merchant. "I'm not sure I can explain it," Mollie said, "but I feel bonded to these people. I can't leave to go live in the lap of luxury while they are all stranded here." "You can sleep in my root cellar if it would make you feel better. ~ Elizabeth Camden

Wherever forest can develop in a species-appropriate manner, they offer particularly beneficial functions that are legally placed above lumber production in many forest laws. I am talking about respite and recovery. Current discussions between environmental groups and forest users, together with the first encouraging results-such as the forest in Konigsdorf-give hope that in the future forests will continue to live out their hidden lives, and our descendants will still have the opportunity to walk through the trees in wonder. This what this ecosystem achieves: the fullness of life with tens of thousands of species interwoven and interdependent.

And just how important this interconnected global network of forests is to other areas of Nature is made clear by this little story from Japan. Katsuhiko Matsunaga, a marine chemist at the Hokkaido University, discovered that leaves falling into streams and rivers leach acids into the ocean that stimulate growth of plankton, the first and most important building block in the food chain. More fish because of the forest? The researcher encouraged the planting of more trees in coastal areas, which did, in fact, lead to higher yields for fisheries and oyster growers. ~ Peter Wohlleben

Unfortunately the hostility that the European displayed toward the native cultures he encountered he carried even further into his relations with the land. The immense open spaces of the American continents, with all their unexploited or thinly utilized resources, were treated as a challenge to unrelenting war, destruction, and conquest. The forests were there to be cut down, the prairie to be plowed up, the marshes to be filled, the wildlife to be killed for empty sport, even if not utilized for food or clothing.

In the act of 'conquering nature' our ancestors too often treated the earth as contemptuously and as brutally as they treated its original inhabitants, wiping out great animal species like the bison and the passenger pigeon, mining the soils instead of annually replenishing them, and even, in the present day, invading the last wilderness areas, precious just because they are still wildernesses, homes for wildlife and solitary human souls. Instead we are surrendering them to six-lane highways, gas stations, amusement parks, and the lumber interests, as in the redwood groves, or Yosemite, and Lake Tahoe-though these primeval areas, once desecrated, can never be fully restored or replaced. ~ Lewis Mumford

originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones." "But the Solar System!" I protested. "What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently: "you ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

In my case, the effort for these years to live in the dress of Arabs, and to imitate their mental foundation, quitted me of my English self, and let me look at the West and its conventions with new eyes: they destroyed it all for me. At the same time I could not sincerely take on the Arab skin: it was an affectation only. Easily was a man made an infidel, but hardly might he be converted to another faith. I had dropped one form and not taken on the other, and has become like Mohammed's coffin in our legend, with a resultant feeling of intense loneliness in life, and a contempt, not for other men, but for all they do. Such detachment came at times to a man exhausted by prolonged physical effort and isolation. His body plodded on mechanically, while his reasonable mind left him, and from without looked down critically on him, wondering what that futile lumber did and why. Sometimes these selves would converse in the void; and then madness was very near, as I believe it would be near the man who could see things through the veils at once of two customs, two educations, two environments. ~ T.E. Lawrence

The italian nanny was attempting to answer the teachers latest question when the moroccan student interupted, shouting "Excuse me, What is an easter?"
it would seem that depsite having grown up in a muslim country, she would have heard it mentioned once or twice, but no. "I mean it," She said. " I have no idea what you people are talking about."
The teacher called upon the rest of us to explain.
The poles led the charge to the best of their ability. It is," said one, "a party for the little boy of god who call his self jesus and... oh shit." She faltered and her fellow country man came to her aid.
He call his self Jesus and then he die one day on two... morsels of... lumber."
The rest of the class jumped in, offering bits of information that would have given the pope an aneurysm.
he die one day and then he go above of my head to live with your father."
he weared of himself the long hair and after he die. the first day he come back here for to say hello to the peoples."
he Nice the jesus."
he make the good things, and on the easter we be sad because somebody makes him dead today. ~ David Sedaris

That's what we do. Embellish. Decorate. Unvarnished truth has only limited appeal. Some events are a joy to recall, but others are best modified, even forgotten. They live in some lumber-room of the mind, housed somewhere you wouldn't want to go alone and never after dark. If I make a mistake in my work or if I change my mind, I can unpick. Undo what I've done. I can make good my errors and no one is the wiser. If they looked, even through a magnifying glass, all observers would see would be the tiny holes where my needle had travelled. I can erase even that evidence by scratching carefully at the weave of the lining with my needle, until the holes are no longer visible. But life isn't like that. Mistakes once made are rarely reversible. The holes they leave in the fabric of life aren't tiny and they can't be scratched away. You have to live with them as best you can. Work round them. That's why you have to come to terms with memory. You can't obliterate the past or eradicate it from the mind, even when, for our own good, memory enfolds us in a blanket of forgetfulness. There are always traces left, marks where time gripped us and left its telltale fingerprint. ~ Linda Gillard

The sawdust flew. A slightly sweet fragrance floated in the immediate area. It was a sweet but subtle aroma, neither the scent of pine nor willow, but one from the past that had been forgotten, only to reappear now after all these years, fresher than ever. The workmen occasionally scooped up a handful of sawdust, which they put into their mouths and swallowed. Before that they had chewed on pieces of green bark that they had stripped from the cut wood. It had the same fragrance and it freshened their mouths, so at first that was what they had used. Now even though they were no longer chewing the bark with which they felt such a bond, the stack of corded wood was a very appealing sight. From time to time they gave the logs a friendly slap or kick. Each time they sawed off a section, which rolled to the ground from the sawhorse, they would say:

'Off with you - go over there and lie down where you belong.'

What they were thinking was that big pieces of lumber like this should be used to make tables or chairs or to repair a house or make window frames; wood like this was hard to find.

But now they were cutting it into kindling to be burned in stoves, a sad ending for good wood like this. They could see a comparison with their own lives, and this was a saddening thought. ("North China") ~ Xiao Hong

Silas nods and turns to back the car up, accidently brushing a hand against my shoulders as he does so.
"Sorry," he says under his breath, like he's whispering in church. I shake my head as Scarlett settles her long arms and legs in the backseat and uses her cloak as a blanket.
Still trying to lean somewhere between the door of death and Silas's shoulder, I stare out the window as we lumber out of town. The road is smooth, hypnotic, with the dotted lines vanishing rhythmically before us. I glance back at my sister. She's fallen asleep, and Screwtape is casting her dark looks, as if she's to blame for his predicament.
I looked toward Silas, trying to appear as if I'm just glancing out his window. Really, I want to study him intensely. He's wearing one of his many nearly threadbare T-shirts, jeans that are soft from washing, wavy hair . . . Everything about him begs to be touched . . .
"You're nervous," Silas says suddenly.
"What? No!" I answer sharply. Am I that obvious?
Silas raises an eyebrow and laughs.
"It makes sense. I mean, you and Lett have lived in Ellison forever." Right . . . right. He's talking about the trip, not my resisting the temptation to fall on him. We're silent for a moment, nearly tangible awkwardness floating around the front seats. Silas drums his fingers on the steering wheel. ~ Jackson Pearce

To: Anna Oliphant
From: Etienne St. Clair
Subject: Uncommon Prostitues

I have nothing to say about prostitues (other than you'd make a terrible prostitute,the profession is much too unclean), I only wanted to type that. Isn't it odd we both have to spend Christmas with our fathers? Speaking of unpleasant matters,have you spoken with Bridge yet? I'm taking the bus to the hospital now.I expect a full breakdown of your Christmas dinner when I return. So far today,I've had a bowl of muesli. How does Mum eat that rubbish? I feel as if I've been gnawing on lumber.

To: Etienne St. Clair
From: Anna Oliphant
Subject: Christmas Dinner


MUESLY? It's Christmas,and you're eating CEREAL?? I'm mentally sending you a plate from my house. The turkey is in the oven,the gravy's on the stovetop,and the mashed potatoes and casseroles are being prepared as I type this. Wait. I bet you eat bread pudding and mince pies or something,don't you? Well, I'm mentally sending you bread pudding. Whatever that is. No, I haven't talked to Bridgette.Mom keeps bugging me to answer her calls,but winter break sucks enough already. (WHY is my dad here? SERIOUSLY. MAKE HIM LEAVE. He's wearing this giant white cable-knit sweater,and he looks like a pompous snowman,and he keeps rearranging the stuff on our kitchen cabinets. Mom is about to kill him. WHICH IS WHY SHE SHOULDN'T INVITE HIM OVER FOR HOLIDAYS). Anyway.I'd rather not add to the drama.

Stephanie Perkins