the english language is famous for many things, most of them bad. it is evolutionary and cumbersome. it has tense, number, gender, myriad useless pronouns, more punctuation than it needs by many times, impossible spelling because it doesn’t really follow rules and borrows from multiple simultaneous writing systems and an… Read More »the language of more-than-one

if you’re starting as a woodworker in the west, you would be forgiven for assuming stanley didn’t just make planes but was actually aiming to give craftspeople a better way to fight insomnia than counting fluffy sweaters-in-training (sheep or was that obvious?). with its confusing number system, many beginners either… Read More »counting planes

there’s an elephant in the room. a sticky yellow one. i know you’ve seen it. the video about endgrain and glue. and i have lost count of the number of times someone has mentioned it to me and asked if this has changed the way i think about furniture and… Read More »all’s well that’s endgrain

today is my mother’s birthday. she was my gateway to the world of wood — and nature in general. she’s an avid gardener and she and my father built the home they’ve now (finally, well into their seventies) retired to, years before i was born. just to give you a… Read More »getting your curve on

from the earliest i can remember until i was perhaps twenty, i was constantly trying to convince people (usually people older than me) they needed computers in their lives. they often didn’t understand the purpose. what would it do for them they couldn’t do with typewriters or pens and pencils… Read More »you don’t need a computer

there is a traditional phrase in buddhist teaching that usually gets translated to english as “beginner’s mind” — an openness to new ideas and willingness to approach every moment as if it’s a new, unfamiliar experience and start there. this is both excellent advice for life and dramatically impractical —… Read More »let’s begin