Mortise and Tenon make a porno

A rehab in pictures…

The old sawmill had seen better days…

A larger box mill was added to original sawmill. Both had been stabilized until work resumed.

Its restoration would include as much of the original timber and sheathing as possible-

There’s a lot of assessing when determining which of the old timbers can be reused.

Joinery notes or a martini recipe? You decide-

Wanted: Oak and pine timber with an early 19th-century aspect:

Plans worked out and timbers hewn, it was time to cut.

We are not adverse to machines-

Though certain joints are cut in the old style:

A pin will crash this party between mortise and tenon-

Cutting is relatively easy, relative to layout that is…

The beefy top of a jowled post.

The slow dance of trial fitting…

Here, Pret replaces the forlorn end of an old tie beam.

New life for old ties-

The beam in context with its new post:

A sweet little brace with perfectly swept grain is still perfectly functional-

Now that the majority of the sawmill’s frame was cut, the North Bennet Street School Preservation Carpentry Program helped us to raise it.

First the long walls–

Then the tie beams-

Hatch Mill volunteer and photographer Bill Powell captures the action-

 

And good men who had been steadfast in their vision and support of this old up-and-down sawmill took a moment to enjoy the progress at day’s end-

Dean and Roy, two of several people who refuse to let Hatch Mill die.

 Time to cover the new (old) frame-

 The roof sheathing was also a mix of old and new:

September’s fair weather allowed us to make hay-

 The NBSS students returned to get their shingling technique on-

There was good progress after a couple of days-

Preservation student Emily made a great video of the NBSS contributions:

MLB Restorations returned after a week of dreary October weather to finish roofing and start on sidewalls-

 And with the help of many, what once was…

Continued a return to its former–if humble–glory.

 

For more information on the restoration of The Hatch Mill, please visit:

http://hatchmill.com/ 

or The Hatchmill Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hatch-Mill/364489727000021

 

Hewing in The Yard–a motion picture

It’s 2:23 long. It’s a video of guys chopping with axes.

Maybe you need a new hobby…I don’t know.

But at the end there’s a sweet “football” maneuver by Nigel,  who just may be the greatest  dog in the world.

Plus, there is reggae.

 

On another note…

…there’s nice write-up about Peter Follansbee and his new work situation by Chris Schwarz of Lost Art Press:

http://blog.lostartpress.com/2014/07/14/peter-follansbee-has-left-the-building/

hewing post

Hewing.

It’s about relationships-

Of axe to oak.

Of edge to grain.

Of hands to helve.

Of Advil to every 6 hours…

Walk the Line

I have a confession to make…

I went to England and had a thing with quercus robur. She was knotty. She had a really big heart and I LIKED it.

Please don’t tell quercus alba or quercus rubra about this.

I love American white and red oak. They are the meat and potatoes of my trade. I am nothing without them.

I went to England on business. But I was caught up in her foreign, insouciant air, and the way her delicate leaves reflected the morning sunlight. She would wave to me from an open field and I stared awestruck at her beauty. Maybe it was the cask beer–but have you seen her fetching knot patterns? I don’t know. It was just a fling of the axe, I swear. It was a tree-tryst.

The bevel made me do it.

Oh American oaks, I’ve come home to you, with open and cramped arms, axing your forgiveness. Please don’t leave me for tomato stakes or pallets.

But English oak, why must you beguile this wayward Yankee so?

You Hew and Cry

There’s been a whole lot of hewing this year. If I was filling out a job application, I’d have to write “Hewer” in the space provided, if I could get my fingers to hold a pen.

You think about things when you hew so much. You begin to see the process a little more for what it actually is. You begin to speak the language of the ancients when you hew day after day. It’s really a form of time-travel, this hewing business.

But to hew, to really hew, you need to go through fire.

There’s the physical torment-

The knuckle below your middle finger will never become calloused. Get used to the bloodletting. Some mornings, just when you think it’s about healed, you hit that nice square corner you just created. Before the workday starts, you almost want to just get it over with and use a hammer to knock off yesterday’s scab. (There must be so much blood on ancient timbers. Some kid from MIT should figure out how to extract DNA from ancient house timbers, go all Jurassic Park and create a carpenter using a  14th-century genome sequence).

Your arms and back cry mercy and it’s not even first tea yet. You try various positions to find just the right stance. Sometimes you just lie down and stretch. Or walk away in disgust.

And the mental games soon follow-

There are several thousand swings and misses. Is it just me?

Come ON, you tell no one in particular as you miss the line by a quarter inch. No, I don’t have Tourette’s. 

The line seems so impossibly narrow. How on earth can you be expected to hew to that atom’s width of a line?? Oops, missed again.

The grain will change in direct proportion to your budding confidence.

You have Ally McBeal fantasies about embedding a broad axe into your shin while Al Green croons.

Tell me once again how much more there is left to hew?

1 of 5 pages.

If you want to hew, to really hew, you’ve got to be committed.

Keep your axe sharp, clean the dirt off your bearers, and take a deep breath.

A musician learns the scales and the changes before soloing. It’s mundane and tedious and oh-so necessary. Your first attempts at hewing will feature stop cuts, undercut faces, and a line which is anything but walked. It will look like a Cub Scout on Twinkies has been let loose with a dull hatchet.

But you watch how others hew, how they change the angle of their axe to the grain. You get a feel for the rhythm and pace of the work. You begin to look differently at the timbers in old houses, both the refined and the utilitarian. What does the final face need to look like? How does my axe affect that? The tribulations of a long-dead carpenter begin to resonate with you.

Score marks below the plane of the hewn face; circa 1663, Bristol, UK

It’s a constant adaptation of a moving axe to changing grain. But there isn’t much time to think about it when you’re actually doing it. You’ve practiced your scales and chords–now you’re beginning to just play.

In time, your faces are square to each other and in wind along their length. You have begun to see plumb and square even as you build up a muscle memory for the process.

As with any piece of music, there are dynamics throughout the work. Sometimes you stand menacingly over the prone oak. You hold the axe towards the bottom of the handle for greater leverage and you strike down with great violence and send large pieces of sapwood and heart flying. It’s brutish and efficient and teetering on the edge of chaos. At other times, the same axe in the same hands is choked up towards the head and is played with delicate precision. You finish a side by taking off translucent shavings as if planing. The distinctive sound of a sharp edge finishing an oak face is a different part of the arrangement.

The broad axe is a wonderful instrument.

Chris, Ant, Andy, and Justin scoring and hewing and making crisps.

You cannot stress or overcompensate trying to hit the line. When it’s right, you just do it.

But even seasoned hewers are not always in a zone. You may give several hours of pedestrian hewing and missed lines for an hour of focused, Zen-like prowess.

And when you’re locked in, it’s magic. It’s Bobby Orr going coast to coast to score unassisted. It’s Keith Jarrett becoming one with his piano. You don’t want to stop. You have built up the physical strength to work through gnarly grain. When you’re in that place, you know exactly where the edge of the axe will land. You play the grain while hewing as if reading music or improvising. It’s worth all the misery and tedium because frankly, it’s sublime.

Which came first–the blowout at the bottom of a hewn face or the chamfer?

In the flora analysis, oaks will be oaks, whether they’re red, white, or blue. Take a splint from the hewing, put it in your mouth and taste the wine. You’ve earned it.

For a direct connection with the material, there’s nothing like hewing. Your relationship with the tree and its grain will lead you to a more elemental place. And that experience will follow you through all other aspects of the work–the planing and sawing, the cutting and assembling of joints.

I’ve been hewing for a couple of decades and I’m still learning. On this trip, I really began to understand my broad axe. We’ve been friends for years, but in England she was in her element. She taught me things. I was a little slow at first, but she was patient with me as I realized how she was meant to approach the grain. Physically and mentally I was prepared. All I had to do was hold her and let her take me where she would.

I love both English and American oaks. There I’ve said it.

But my true love, I suppose, is my axe.

Hewing-

It’s about relationships.

 

 

 

 

 

Wicked Gert Lush

and other picked up pieces from England…

One could live comfortably for years on English pigeons and Special Brew.

There are Jackalopes in England. One of them ran before our van on the way to hewing the other day. The locals call them muntjacs. Details.

On a related note, the very awesome Graham has seen wallabies on two separate occasions prowling the Mapledurham Estate. I, for one, believe a man in a red jump suit:

Speaking of Graham, he was featured, along with the gang at Miles and Company, in a documentary about the execution of the Earl of Essex and the nuts and bolts of the scaffold’s construction. Apparently, Graham’s cameo at the end of the program showed real star potential: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0dSTtjO2E8

Speaking of executions, the axe featured in the Tower of London exhibit is single-beveled:

Do you orient the flat of the axe toward the spine or the head?

My vote is spine, so as your waste is pushed forward and aHEAD by the bevel.

Barrow Hill cider really DOES make your teeth itch. Thanks John and Barry.

Andy informed me that there’s a place in England’s Lake District called, “Hard Knot Pass”. As a hewer of timber, I’d like to visit just to say that I’ve scored a few times there.

If something’s manky, it’s not quite ship-shape.

“Let’s go swing axes, I can’t feel my hands”, said Justin.

Speaking of nails, Justin and I paid on the nails in Bristol. Francis Eaton, Mayflower’s famed carpenter, was also a Bristol man.

Maybe he once did the same.

Ant Sawyer of Buckingham hewed admirably alongside us everyday. He’s from near The Chesham Bois. That is also the likely origin of Phineas Pratt, an early Plymouth, MA joiner. Thus, Ant covers all the major woodworking trades: He’s a Sawyer who does carpentry from a known joiner’s birthplace.

A publican runs a pub. If this is their second pub, are they a re–publican? Michael asked. People have been beheaded for less, Mr. Burrey.

In a similar vein, Justin asked: If chips are called crisps over here, are the pieces of wood we’re hewing off of our logs wood crisps? There must be something in the water.

When icons are seen for the first time–how is this even real?

Stinging nettles, black adders, and instant coffee: The only dangerous things in Britain.

Red kites are common  in the skies above Mapledurham. There once was a time not so long ago that locals would pull their car over to get a rare glimpse of one. They were really working the newly mown field the other day after work.

When you come to our side of the pond, we promise to let you teach us about cricket–

Apologies to the patient waiter at the Indian Restaurant we ate at last week. When you asked us if we’d like our dishes dry or saucy, our laughter was inevitable. We’re just a bunch of doolally hewers.

I came in this am feeling like batman–left feeling like Robin.  –Chris

Safety first, Nigel. When we open our US pub, we are calling it Nigel’s.

Carhartts are very gucci in Europe.

Give up your car keys to a friend if you’re:

A. Wankered

B. Gazeboed,

C. Fucked & wankered,

or

D. Rat-faced.

Had a great visit with Nigel Howe, of the Carpenter’s Fellowship. He showed us around his current project in downtown Bristol, the rehab/restoration of  a trio of mid-17th century triple deckers. More on that later.

Speaking of Bristol, what a city. Gert lush, as they say. Bristol is mother to San Fransisco, Toronto and Seattle.

It’s a city where old and new walk together.

We watched England’s World Cup match against Italy deep inside a Bristol pub.

Justin, ever a friend to the underdog, befriended the lone man wearing an Italy Football jersey. Thankfully, there was no trouble. We had to hew the next day.

Before the game, an excellent band covered Mrs. Robinson. When the Where have you gone Joe Dimaggio? verse came up, all of us homesick Americans sang loudly.

Conversations while hewing sometimes involved Coventry and Dresden with a soundtrack of DJ Shadow. Surreal.

On this trip, we’ve met both  a true “Sir” and a Polish Countess. Hewing–what can’t it do?

We stowed away some old friends in our suitcases:

Crossing a Reading street was very much like being a live action character in the game of Frogger. You 80’s kids know what I’m talking about.

At the risk of generalizing, English folk are some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. Cheeky, yes. Funny? Eccentric? Hell yeah. But they made us feel at home.

I went to England and all I got was this sunburn–

Good thing Justin covered himself up in robes at the Muchelney Abbey in Somerset:

Dan, mind if I make a call on the shop phone?

Yes, just don’t call France.

No, only Shrewsbury.

When the Brits lumped our native Boston accents with New Yorkers the other day, we got all provincial and showed them this video (hide the kids–this is NSFW!!!) to illustrate the difference. This is a decent example of Boston-talk, mostly north shore.

The butcher is shut, no bangers and mash tonight-the butcher is shut-– Words no laboring man wants to hear. Wasn’t that a line from Lord of The Rings?

Sage advice from friends:

Mister Bean cars…

are…

everywhere-

Met Humphrey, the parrot, at the Packhorse Pub. It was his 12th birthday.

Once upon a time, he’d been lost. A parrot was found, but upon closer examination it proved to be a different parrot. What are the odds? After 37 days, a parrot was seen in a local oak. Humphrey’s owner sang and whistled for 6 hours under that tree until, branch by branch, the bird came down and landed on his shoulder. It was Humphrey. The owner of the Humphrey look-a-like was also found. Happy endings.

Speaking of which, a newspaper clipping of Rupert Murdoch decorated the bottom of his cage the night I met Humphrey.

English pub life.

Nigel, say hello to Humphrey.

Thank you for everything, England. What a show-

 

\

 

The chunk chunk of our hewing makes perfect accompaniment to Bob Marley. This prompted several quotes from wise-ass Facebook friends:

           -If you are a big tree, I got a broad ax, sharp and ready to chop you down.

           –Hewing…hewing…hewing in da name of da Lord

          -Chips in my eyes burn, chips in my eyes burn. While I’m waiting, while I waiting for my turn.

          – AX-E-DUS…movement of Ja Broad Ax…

           -I especially like Marley’s “Greatest Hits of 1622” album.

           -One Log

Gert lush, people.

Wicked gert lush.

 

John, the joiner

We follow his cue–when he takes tea, so do we.

When he puts his cup down, we trail him back to work.

His name is John.

He’s been a joiner at the Miles and Company Yard for 17 years now.

I caught up with John after a busy weekend in Bristol. The quiet efficiency of his shop was in stark contrast to city street parties and pub football.

But as much as I wanted to chat longer with him, I didn’t want to interrupt his day. He was very cordial while the awestruck American snapped a few photos.

This morning, he was working on a set of library doors for a flat in London. The doors are made of English oak. The grain is perfect all through the stiles, rails and panels.

Panels feature the characteristic “cat’s paw” so common in English oak. John book-matches the knot patterns to great effect.

We see cat’s paws daily in our hewing as well:

…and festooning oak trunks on our walk in the wood the other day–

Steady and sure, his work is of the highest quality.

Richard putting a light finish on one of John’s doors.

If Central Casting needed a traditional English joiner for one film or another, they would need to follow John around for a few days.

They would have to be prompt about their morning and afternoon teas, however.

I should be retired now…I’m 69 years. But I DO love my job. 

 

The King of Hall Hill Wood

We went to an ancient woodland this evening.

Driving past Nuney Green, there’s a stretch of forest called Gutteridge Wood.

It feels primeval here.

Among the straight beeches and fickle holly, there stood oak giants.

And here the old boys stand as they have stood for centuries.

As we trod the beech litter below, a deer darted through the green ahead of us. It’s an open wood, free of briars, thickets and thorns.

Gnarled crowns above shade much of the forest floor below.

But deer were not the only creatures living here.

In one place, we heard a sound and looked over to see a tarp neatly set up near a great trunk. Someone had been here. For how long we didn’t know.

As we continued down the muddy path, our guide matter of factly informed us that we were walking past a saw-pit.

A saw-pit.

A long-abandoned pit where Englishmen had once pit-sawn Gutteridge Wood oaks and beeches into boards, planks, and house timbers. Who knows how long since it had last been used.

The author taking a spin in the pit, holding the bottom of an imaginary saw. To be in an actual saw-pit seemed at once familiar and sacred.

The pit itself was roughly 14′ long and 6′ wide. It showed no signs of timber being used to shore up its sides but seemed to be a simply dug affair with tapered sides. Likely, it was significantly deeper before years of neglect had filled it in. It was close to the path which would facilitate transport of trees to and fro the pit.

Would you like to see the best tree in the wood? our guide asked.

My mind was already blown by the saw-pit.

Why not?

We turned down Deadman’s Lane, past boundary ditches and into Hall Hill Wood. (All the woods here are named).

After a brief walk we passed yet another saw-pit towards the biggest oak of all–

The King of Hall Hill Wood.

Quietly majestic, this giant had seen hundreds of winters–as well as sawyers–come and go. And still it stood.

There was at least 45 feet of clear oak until the crown. Likely more. Big enough, certainly, to hew the great spanning beams we had seen recently in The Tower of London–the longest such spans of a single oak in England:

But this oak is spared the feller’s axe and the tiller’s saw.

Let it watch our comings and goings for another 400 years at the least.

 

 

 

 

 

A Cinnabon in Omaha

…and other tidbits.

Who’s a chip off the ol’ block?

Zach’s chair instruction. Note his disdain for the knot. The kid’s a natural, just like his old man.

• Speaking of predilections, MLB would have been a very good concert pianist. His hands fan out like a pterodactyl’s wings and he has an ear for things classical. His tragic flaw, though, would have been his tendency to be continually distracted by the construction details of both instrument and stage.

• A THANK YOU to Unplugged Shop for organizing and listing posts for like-minded people who would rather use a handsaw than a power saw.

• The bridge we have been working on (the span is pictured below) will have no positive camber. It doesn’t need it, I have been told, unless they’re expecting heavy vehicular traffic between the spa and the inn. Positive Camber is more of an album name than a band name–think 70’s “van rock”.

Like a bridge over troubled, pumped and recycled, water.

• Scribe rule, square rule, mill rule, O’Doyle Rules! These are different framing layout techniques. Our bridge uses ’em all (excepting mill rule–it just seemed the right thing to say at the time).

• The key is to make your exodus from Douchebury as soon as you realize you’ve been there. I have frequented the cafes there too often myself.

• The subject of chisel ferrules came up the other day while we were banging out mortises. Michael had a great suggestion for using a 1″ pipe coupling (with threads) for a robust ferrule. I mean to try that, though my chisel is temporarily ferruled with hockey tape. And by “temporarily” I mean indefinitely. Hockey Tape Feral–acoustic Canadian punk.

• The sound progression from saw to mallet to paring with a chisel, it’s…music.

• I reckon we’re about a fortnight til the chorus of spring peepers fills the evening air.

Trenail soup. Add seasoning to taste.

• I’m working with uneven surfaces here, said John O., somewhat skeptically, in reference to our hewing.

• Someday, some way, we’ll get to finishing up our story about our Duxbury Tree House. It’s just that there have been SO many things going on in the interim, he said whining.

• It’s so damned easy to respond to ugly with more ugly. That’s why there’s a bucket of wisdom in a friend’s recent blog post.

• A HUGE thanks to Pine, Alex, et al, of the Jones River Landing for putting up with our noise, our bad jokes, and our tracking of sawdust and wood chips between the coffee machine and the bathroom. You have been the best hosts ever. We promise to clean up after ourselves.

• Thanks also to Peter Arenstam and Don Heminitz for moving the boat, Merry Wing from the Jones River Landing shop so us landsmen framers could do our plumb and square work.

Trial fitting of post to plate.

• We’ve had several very nice folks visit our work at the Landing. It feels good to share what we’ve been up to. Sometimes, however, the ambient noise makes for interesting dialogue:

Me: Where are you from?

Roy: No thank you. 

Saw horse horseplay. NSFW

• In the day, our friend, the talented S.W.B. used to call the tail-end of our department’s meeting minutes “tidbits”. Things like, repair Cooke chimney boot-daub, plug hole in Hopkins thatch, and fix cow-pen would be hastily scrawled in a notebook which, ultimately, no one would refer to. With his head for organization and numbers, his acumen for hand tools and honest toil, and his decency and simple human compassion, I submit that Mr. B. would make a superlative CEO for a small to medium-sized non-profit. 

• The things you learn at the Jones River Landing: Glass eels and elvers (immature eels) are a delicacy in parts of Asia. Mass guys and Mainers will poach them under cover of darkness from our rivers and sell them to Japan, who, in turn, will continue to grow them until they re-sell them to China. Needless to say, this is a bad thing, not only for the eel population but for the ecosystem generally. Such slippery international drama on the soporific South Shore: Who knew?

MLB’s shop in transition. Books on the bench and shavings on the floor. That about sums it up.

• I found myself literally on the edge of my seat, mouth agape, watching the final episodes of Breaking Bad. Jesse’s fantasy about woodworking was made all the more poignant by his descent into hell.

• There was also this found somewhere online:

• This made Saul’s comic relief all the more hilarious: If I’m lucky, three months from now, best case scenario, I’m managing a Cinnabon in Omaha.

• And finally–

There are no words.

All Hands are Well-inclined

They tossed the pine both right and left

The blocks and slivers flew,

They scared the wild moose from their yards

Likewise the caribou.

Here’s a video inspired by the Smithsonian Folkways recording, Classic Canadian Songs.

I had never heard a song about hewing until now. Hogan’s Lake was originally recorded on the Folkways album, Lumbering Songs from the Ontario Shanties, 1961.

Lizzie Borden took an axe-

-and gave the oak 3400 whacks…

That is to say, it takes about that many strokes/cuts/chops of a broad axe to hew a quarter inch from four faces of a 7×8″, 14′ 8″ length of red oak.

I love to count–

The pile (below) of hewn oak represents roughly 51,000 strokes of a broad axe. Your local box store probably has an economy stack of ’em back by the drywall. Don’t forget to re-stack the pile after you’ve picked through.

Da Capo

When we begin to make little motorboat sounds with our lips after a long day of hewing (we’re hewing stock for a little bridge) we naturally do things like count to keep our minds sharp, even as our axes begin to dull. It’s an exercise in extrapolation, exertion, and math for dummies. It also gives us a number to put towards the effort required to process timber with hand tools.

Some years ago, in another dimension, we timed and counted the number of pit-saw strokes it took to saw about 8 feet through a similarly dimensioned oak. In that spirit we thought it’d be groovy to do the same thing for hewing. So…I counted the number of strokes it took to hew one face of the oak. One thing led to another and Justin and I thought, why not figure out how many strokes it takes to hew an entire log. Yea, verily, let us use our human reasoning and opposable texting thumbs to reckon the total amount of strokes for ALL of the timbers!

Stoked for strokes

We started by scoring to the line. This takes a measly 50 strokes/face, give or take, using the felling axe. We did not include the number of scoring cuts made in our numbers. The oak is from our friends at Gurneys. None better.

Scoring this puppy is harder than it looks–you take so little off, it’s wicked easy to go to deep.

Here is the finished face. It’s a little out of wind. Don’t judge me. This one face took 900 strokes of the broad axe to hew:

Here is the log at approximately 100 strokes-

300 strokes brought me to about 6 feet-

Getting there at 700 strokes–

Don’t forget to count…don’t forget to count…

So, 900 strokes with the broad axe to hew almost 15 feet of an 8″ face of oak. From this we can determine how many strokes per square foot of hewing.

Contents may settle upon chipping

Ere we continue, the following qualifications must be made:

• This isn’t hewing from round logs. That count is for another day.

• The grain of the particular side used for counting was mostly knot-free and had plenty of sapwood. This would presumably require fewer strokes than a knotty, mostly heart-grained face.

• The count includes swings and misses and near misses.

• The oak was green, though it was noticeably dryer than had we hewn it from a newly felled, round tree.

• We hadn’t any obvious signs of scurvy on the day of our reckoning.

• The hewing and count will be greatly influenced by the hewer’s axe. The axe I’m using is an old style model weighing a little more than 7 lbs. It’s beveled on 2 sides and helved with white oak.

• I’ve added the letter “e” to the word “axe” so as to make my friends across the pond feel welcome and my stateside neighbors think I’m pretentious.

• All numbers are rounded up or down and are approximate.

• Every hewer hews with a unique style. Numbers may vary.

• My math skills are that of a second grader. When we asked Siri for help, she said, wtf are you talking about?

So many words, so much math. Let’s take a quick break:

OK-thanks for coming back.

Y ahora, los cálculos!

Here’s a bunch of numbers for ya just in time for taxes. H&R chopping block! This is no stroke of genius. In fact, our figuring may be utterly wrong. We await feedback from you, gentle reader.

All of our calculations are based on this one little equation in my kitchen (thanks Kim):

90 strokes per square foot. That sounds like a lot, but it proves true in the doing. We multiplied the length in inches by the width of the face being hewn. The resulting number was divided by 144, rounded up and converted to square feet. The face which took 900 strokes to hew was approximately 10 square feet. That convenient number gave us the number of 90 strokes/sq.ft.

From there, it was all scribbles and beard tugging until we came up with the numbers for all of our hewing:

So, about 51,000 chops with the broad axe to remove a quarter inch from each face of 22 pieces of varying lengths of oak.

Deep thoughts

What does any of this mean? Is there a point? If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.

We just can’t know what any of this means. Arms are sore and there are motorboat sounds to make. In the meanwhile, we’ll keep hewin, figurin, and drinkin with Mary Lou.

When the job was nicely done

She gave another 3400 and one.

Horseshoes, hand grenades, and hewing

We work between a highway-

and a graveyard-

Hewing stock for a little bridge.

Sometimes the gods favor us with fair grain and following knots.

But froward grain can take the romance out of hewing.

Those cars and the people inside them, doppler-effecting the very air around us as they go to Boston to fix bodies or solve equations or manage capital–they’re all traveling on straight lines. At least, they mean to.

We chase lines as well–blue and unimaginative lines–toward our next paycheck. It’s more than that, of course, but still the lines remain fixed and rigid.

And when we come away from the line, it’s ok, I suppose, in the larger scheme of things. We have existential mysteries to ponder and beards to snot.

We are musing while hewing:

Log post blog post

Debo run,

Lipstick on a chicken-

Flying Nun!

Somebody stop us.

It’s cold out. That slows us.

Carry on with your hoodied-self.

Two hewers making their axes chunk-chunk-chunk at the same time, keeping time, keeping lines between the highway and the graveyard.

The throaty winding gears of the school bus tell us it’s 3:30 and time for dads to meet their sons and daughters at the edge of the driveway-

And put down their tools for a little while to help with other things…

Lines yielding in that place between the highway and the graveyard.

Special thanks to Michael Burrey, Justin Keegan, and Dave Wheelock. 

3 more weeks to catch Debo Band (pronounced Deb-O) at Lizard Lounge in Cambridge, MA! They will play each Thursday night, January 30th, February 6th and 13th. Think Ethiopian pop, American soul & funk, and lots of brass creating an absolutely unique and wonderful sound. You will move your feet. And…Justin’s cousin Pj is the band’s bassist to boot! Maybe we’ll see you there.